Chapter Text
“Halloween is a sanitized baby-wipe version of true horror. If you’re going to scare children, do it right. Scream at them as soon as they’re born, and then continue religiously until they turn the tender age of eighteen, at which point they can choose to either kill you, or leave.”
“Agatha,” Jen sighed as they strolled down the grocery aisle, giving her coworker, who was somehow not yet a convicted felon or a diagnosed psychopath, a sidelong glance. “Do you ever get tired of living your life like a retired Disney villain?”
“If I was a Disney villain,” Agatha replied, looking at the deflated Maleficent ensemble hanging from a nearby shelf. “I’d have a much hotter costume.”
Jen rolled her eyes. “Just help me pick a damn pumpkin.”
Agatha snickered.
But then, remembering where she was, and why she was here, she frowned.
Jennifer and her had been colleagues for fifteen years, and enemies for only thirteen of them. One of the reasons they’d eventually converted from foes to friends was their mutual appreciation for competition, which resulted in a little rivalry between the two of them at the beginning of October to see which one of them could accrue more clients by the end of the month.
Regretfully, Jen had won. But only because Agatha had been hit by a motorcycle at the beginning of the month, and her inability to greet clients in person had detracted from her performance. As it turns out, it’s hard for the lady with a black eye, a boot, and crutches to convincingly sell a fitness subscription. Or supplements. Or any of their other bullshit offers.
So now here she was, decorating. That was the deal: if Agatha lost, she’d help get the Kale household ready for Halloween, and sit like a gargoyle at the door when the kids came by to trick or treat. Agatha was contemplating offing herself before the 31st rolled around.
“So have you figured out your costume yet?” Jen asked as Agatha pushed the quickly swelling shopping cart toward the cash register.
“An IRS agent,” Agatha replied, snickering.
She was secretly hoping if she was defiant enough, Kale would give up and let her stay home. But Jen was frustratingly unrepentant. She just rolled her eyes.
“What?” Agatha threw her hands up. “Name something scarier.”
“Easily,” Jen scoffed. “The idea of explaining to my kids, and all of the kids that visit our house, that their dear Aunt Agatha chose to ruin Halloween by dressing as a federal employee.”
“First of all, I’m not their aunt. Second of all, I’m elevating your children’s sense of humor. How else do I get them to blossom into perfect little nihilists?”
“I don’t want my children to be perfect little nihilists, Agatha. I want them to be happy.”
Agatha grinned. “This is why you’re the one with a wife and kids, and I’m the one who’s ex has a restraining order against her.”
The teenager behind the cash register cleared his throat.
“Will that be cash or credit today, ladies?”
Agatha snorted, and started walking toward the exit, leaving Jen with the bill.
☠︎︎༒︎✞︎🕸𖤐
Agatha stabbed the pumpkin with her knife, watching its orange organs spill out. This was the only part of Halloween she actually enjoyed. Carving.
“Don’t smile so big while you’re doing that. You look like a serial killer.”
“And who’s to say I’m not?”
Jennifer covered her daughter’s ears as Agatha grinned wide, the three of them sat on Jen’s porch in the cold October mist. It was that odd time of year in New England where the weather was both humid and cold. If Agatha had her way, she’d be spending it indoors admiring the fact that she had a house, and did not actually have to be out in the miserable weather.
“Anyway,” Jen sighed. “Have you made any progress on your case against the motorcyclist? You seemed pretty intent on suing them after the accident.”
Agatha grumbled, stabbing the pumpkin with a little more energy.
“No,” she muttered. “Apparently, according to the pigs, I was somehow deemed at fault for the accident. The lawyer I talked to thinks I would just end up getting countersued for the damages on that asshole’s bike if I pursued it. Something about jay-walking into the middle of traffic. Who the hell cares if I was jay-walking? Is it that hard not to trample a beautiful woman in broad daylight?”
Jennifer bit down on her lip. “I mean, you did cross the street on a green light. In a lane where the speed limit was fifty-five miles per hour. It’s honestly impressive you’re not dead.”
“Thank you, dear,” Agatha said, smiling in a way that did not reach her eyes. She then turned towards Jennifer’s youngest gremlin. “Thankfully, I’m immortal.”
The little girl laughed. Agatha laughed with her.
It hurt a little bit.
Fortunately, she wasn’t given time to dwell in her deep pit of autumn despair, because the sound of a roaring, coughing engine dragged her attention toward the street. A motorcycle had come to a halt in front of the house opposite the Kale’s.
A motorcycle with three separate dents in it.
No fucking way.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Agatha sputtered. She recognized the driver’s helmet. It had skull stickers plastered on it, some edgy idiot’s idea of cool. “That’s the asshole! What the hell is he doing here? Is he stalking me?”
She tried to stand from the porch, intent on grabbing one of Jennifer’s garden gnomes and pelting it at the guy, but a hand came to stop her. Jennifer’s hand.
“Agatha. That’s not him. That’s my neighbor.”
Agatha laughed in disbelief. “Well, great news, Jen, your neighbor is an attempted murderer.”
“No she’s not. She’s a pre-school teacher. Her name’s Rio.”
Agatha’s fury deflated. “Wait, she?”
Agatha glared across the yard just in time to watch long silky hair pool around the cyclist’s shoulders, dripping down the back of their Harley Davidson jacket. The woman—Jesus Christ, she’d never expected it to be a woman—had tan, summery skin and chestnut eyes. She was a total, undisputable bombshell. The person who nearly ran her over was a fucking bombshell.
“Okay, so the person who tried to kill me is a woman. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to give her a piece of my mind and, perhaps, fist.”
Jen jumped up, restraining her. “No, you’re absolutely not.”
As the pair of them struggled like brawling cats, Rio had the audacity to shrug off her jacket, put her beautiful toned arms on display in a stupid Nirvana t-shirt, and then wave.
It was the wave that did it.
Agatha broke through Jen’s admittedly impressive hold, and stalked across the street, not looking both ways, even when a Jeep honked loudly, careening around her.
“You!” she shouted, pointing her red acrylic fingernail like it was a weapon of war.
“Me?” Rio said, blinking in confusion, before her eyes widened, and understanding wrapped around her face. Her soft neighborly attitude transformed quickly into disbelief. “Oh my god.”
Agatha’s heels sunk into the dirt of Rio’s lawn, and she grumbled, taking them off and throwing them aside. She expected Rio to take a step back, to show any kind of hesitation, maybe even reply with a mollifying, teacherly I’m so so sorry, this is all a big misunderstanding, but she did nothing of the sort. She just stood there, eyebrows high on her face, and waited.
“Hello? Recognize me? Woman you tried to flatline in the center of Salem a month ago?”
Rio took a second, looked her up and down, and then did something absolutely horrifying.
She laughed.
“Hi, Agatha. That’s a very dishonest retelling of that story.”
Agatha was immediately disarmed.
“How the hell do you know my name?”
That got the laughing to stop. At least momentarily.
“Um, the insurance paperwork?” Rio said. “How do you not know my name?”
Agatha scoffed. “You do your own insurance paperwork?”
“Well, yes. I don’t exactly have a personal lawyer I keep around for every time I hit someone.”
Agatha pointed her finger up again, this time right to Rio’s nose, which was annoyingly perfect looking and blemishless. “Everytime you hit someone! See! I’m sure I wasn’t the first!”
Rio shook her head. “You were the first. And the last, if I can help it. I only hit you because you walked right in front of my bike during a green light. It’s a miracle—”
“...That I’m alive, yada yada, I get it. I’m like a cat. Nine lives. Doesn’t matter. It’s not my fault you can’t control your vehicle.”
Rio laughed again. This time it was a low, deep chuckle that made Agatha feel uncomfortable. Not because it was unattractive, but the opposite. She was being defeated by her own sex drive.
“So, are you and Jen friends, or something?”
Now if Agatha was feeling disarmed before, she was feeling practically annihilated now. Rio had breezed past their entire altercation and was now back in the same form she’d arrived in—relaxed, friendly, neighborly. She’d turned away from Agatha entirely, searching her backpack for something.
“I—I wouldn’t call us friends,” Agatha stuttered. “That is not the point of this conversation.”
Rio laughed, pulling a styrofoam skull out of her knapsack and tossing it between her hands. “What is the point of this conversation?”
Agatha blinked up at her. What the hell was going on? Why was she, Agatha Harkness, mother of zero, tormenter of all, stuttering? She had talked to pretty women before. She was exquisitely good at it, actually. But this person was just… not… compliant. It was completely stressful.
“The point of this conversation was to get you to apologize,” Agatha improvised.
Of course, that had not been the point. The actual point was for her to come here, yell at Rio, and then leave. But her feet were not moving. She felt like they’d turned to cement.
“Oh,” Rio said, thoughtfully biting down on her tongue. She looked down at Agatha’s left leg, which she was still limping on slightly. “I’m sorry you ran into traffic and injured yourself.”
Agatha’s mouth opened. Air blew speechlessly out of it.
But before she could concoct something awful to say in return—something truly batshit crazy that would make Rio hate her, and then this could all be over—the door of Rio’s house swung open.
And a tiny child in a pink dress emerged, holding a human femur.
“Dad,” the child called out. “Did you get the skull?”
☠︎︎༒︎✞︎🕸𖤐
When Agatha got back to the porch, all she said to Jen was, “absolutely not,” took her keys, her wallet, left her shoes, and strutted barefoot back to her car.
Once she was home in bed, tucked away in two thousand dollar sheets, white noise machine blasting, she begrudgingly sent Jen a single message before she went to sleep for the next twelve hours.
AGATHA: Sorry, Jen. I can’t attend Halloween at your house this year. A Toyota Yaris rolled over me on my way home. Just my luck. I’m at the hospital. My whole body’s broken. They say it’s the “worst they’ve ever seen.” It’s so bad that they flew me to the big hospital in Manhattan. If I don’t reply, assume the worst. I leave all of my belongings to my dead cat.
JEN: You are so fucking dramatic.
JEN: Also, Rio came over afterwards to ask if you’re single. I told her she’d have better luck going on a date with an argumentative corpse. She proceeded to give me her number for you.
JEN: (978) – 253 - 7452